Brazil Seeks Green Car Development

BRASILIA, Brazil, Aug 22 Reuters reported that Brazil hopes to sign an agreement with Germany during next week's Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, that could revitalize the production of greener alcohol-powered cars in Brazil, Foreign Minister Celso Lafer said on Thursday.

Lafer also reiterated that Latin America's largest country, which a decade ago hosted the previous Earth summit that produced broad commitments to the environment, would call for developed countries to cover at least 10 percent of their energy needs with renewable energy sources.

He did not give a time frame, but officials said recently Brazil wanted countries to boost the use of non-fossil sources of energy such as water, wind, solar power or biomass by 2010. Biomass is plant and animal matter used to produce power.

Renewable energy accounts for about 2 percent of the world's total, according to Brazilian government officials. It was not known how much of Brazil's energy comes from renewable sources.

On the agreement with Germany, Lafer said it should form part of the so-called "carbon credits" scheme, which allows industrially developed countries to increase their quota of polluting gases in exchange for help to developing countries on environmental protection.

Germany would subsidize production of some 100,000 cars with engines that run on clean-burning alcohol produced from sugar cane. Brazil has some 3 million alcohol-powered cars, but output has all but stalled recently due to a lack of subsidies.

Some critics say the focus on environmental issues proposed by Brazil and a number of other countries would take the debate away from the discussion on how to combat poverty in the world, especially in Africa.

But Lafer said poverty would certainly be discussed in the framework of sustainable development at the Aug. 26-Sept. 4 summit, while "nothing prevents regional topics like that of Africa from being discussed".

Brazil, along with other Latin American countries, urges more aid money for environmental and sustainable growth projects in developing countries, as well as better, unrestricted access to global markets for poorer countries.

WORLD'S BIGGEST NATURE PARK

Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso signed a decree on Thursday creating the National Park of Tumucumaque Mountains in the northern Amapa state by the French Guyana border. It becomes the world's biggest national park.

The park, which occupies a territory of 15,000 square miles (38,000 sq km) is bigger than Belgium and will protect 1 percent of the total Amazon rain forest by creating a clearly marked buffer zone in which logging and industry is banned. It will surpass Congo's Salonga park as the world's biggest.

The World Wildlife Fund said in a statement it gave $1 million to demarcate the area and create basic infrastructure for the park which will protect the region's biodiversity.

It said the creation of the park was another step toward fulfilling the pledge made by Cardoso's government in 1998 to protect at least 10 percent of the treasured Amazon jungle -- a generous source of medicines for mankind and home to up to 30 percent of the world's animal and plant species.

The rate of forest destruction in Brazil fell last year from a five-year peak in 2000, but its pace still troubles environmentalists